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Welcome to Episode 347 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. If you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. You can find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com, where you can find out about my coaching practice, speaking engagements, courses I offer, and books that I've written. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter on the website or at a link that is in the show notes. Finally, if you'd like to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you can find out more details at the link in the show notes as well. Thanks in advance for your consideration. Now, without further ado, here is episode 347, 6 Ways Self Differentiation builds Leadership Courage, Part 2 of 2. The idea for this two-part episode comes from a Harvard business review article, 6 Ways to Practice Everyday Courage by Alex Budak. I think I pronounced it wrong in the last episode, but I will put a link in the show notes to that article. If you haven't listened to part one, I encourage you to do that first.

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Either way, here is a brief summary. Budak distinguishes between bravery and courage. He describes bravery as a heroic quality that is exhibited in a one-off crisis. In contrast, courage is a muscle that's built through consistent value-aligned actions in the face of doubt, risk, or fear. Every day courage is acting in non-crisis moments in a way that shapes culture, trust, and legacy. Budak identifies six types of courage, and for each one, there are three elements. The first is the core risk. This is what one could face and/or lose if courage is exercised. The second element is the leadership action, which is what courage looks like in practice. And the third element is the payoff. This identifies the positive impact that courage has on the relationship system. Last week, I covered the first two types of courage, moral and social. Moral courage is the willingness to act on your values, even when doing so, carries personal or professional risk. Social courage is the willingness speak out or stand apart from the group despite the risk of embarrassment, exclusion, or reputational damage. I'm not going to break these down for you from a family system standpoint as I did that in the last episode.

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So let's move on. The third type of everyday courage is emotional courage. Budak notes that unlike social courage, which focuses on external risks, emotional courage is within you. It's the willingness to feel, name, and act on your own discomfort. Psychologist Susan David describes this as the ability to face uncomfortable emotions with openness and honesty. Instead of shying away from them or letting them control or define you, they become a guide for intentional values-aligned action. This is where self-awareness, self-regulation, and intentionality that comes from self-differentiation makes a difference. Instead of ignoring emotions, you are able to live with the discomfort long enough to examine what's going on inside while while regulating any reactivity or adaptivity that might automatically occur. Emotional courage requires that you're able to live with the discomfort long enough to take responsibility for self and act intentionally in line with your values. In his article, Budak gives an example of what this looks like. He writes, A healthcare COO must announce layoffs after a project she championed failed to meet its financial goals, resulting in major budget cuts. She chooses not to let HR deliver the message on her behalf. Instead, she speaks to the organization directly, takes responsibility, and stays present, even as employees react with disappointment, frustration frustration or grief.

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When shame and regret rise up, she resists the urge to shut down or pull away. Her emotional presence won't erase their pain, but it can preserve her credibility, show accountability, and start to rebuild trust. Trust. Notice the elements of self-definition that is taking responsibility, as well as emotional connection, being present. Anytime you act in line with your values in the midst of discomfort, you are exercising emotional courage. Budak says the way to build emotional courage is to own the feelings, not the room. What he means is taking responsibility for your own feelings without unloading on others. You are engaging your discomfort without blaming or defining others. This requires the self-awareness to first notice, then name and ground your emotions. Budak notes the difference between two types of responses. The first is, these things happen, which is a way to avoid taking responsibility for self. The second is, this didn't go the way I'd hoped, and that's on me, which is self-defining in a healthy way. Finally, resisting the temptation to smooth things over quickly will enable you to live in the discomfort discomfort long enough to own your part in the situation. An interesting side note is that Edwin Friedmann wrote that leaders not only need to embrace discomfort, they need to learn to love it.

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I believe he meant this in the ability to lead change with a sense of adventure, but I think it applies here as well. What I've noticed is that when I'm able to stay in the discomfort of a difficult situation, I'm better able to take responsibility for self, just as Budak suggests. The payoff is greater trust and engagement and resilience in the relationship system. When you take responsibility for self, it creates healthy emotional space for others to do the same. The fourth type of everyday courage is intellectual courage, which is the willingness to question your own assumptions, entertain opposing viewpoints, and, admit what you don't know, all in the service of better thinking and better outcomes. This creates psychological safety, facilitates learning and innovation, and helps you avoid the trap of quick fixes or familiar thinking when the situation or challenge requires change. This is self-definition. While being open to the possibility, you might be wrong or missing something. It's focused on the mission or the larger good of the system and is not about being right. It's being a self while letting others do the same. While it may be obvious, I'll say you can't do this without maintaining healthy emotional connection.

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It also requires you to be willing to go through the longer but more effective process of dealing with challenge. In a failure of nerve, Friedmann notes that one of the characteristics of a chronically anxious system is the desire for a quick fix. This is the opposite of intellectual courage and the opposite of self-differentiation. Buddack suggests interrogating your own thinking publicly to build intellectual courage. This gives others the permission to question without judgment. At the heart of this is detaching your identity from your ideas. Non-anxious leaders don't express what they believe because they need to be right. They do it so that others know where they stand, and they make healthy emotional space for others to do the same. This not only models intellectual courage, it fosters its growth in the system for the sake of the mission and or the greater good. The payoff is faster learning cycles and higher quality decisions. In family systems terms, I would call this adaptability, not adaptivity. It's the ability to respond to challenge and change without getting anxious or stuck. The fifth type of everyday courage is creative courage. In contrast to intellectual courage, which questions what is, creative courage imagines what could be.

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It's sharing innovative ideas, promoting experimentation, and inviting others to do the same, even though you know that some of those efforts will fail. The reason this is important is that research shows that while new ideas can come from anywhere, modeling creative courage helps you nurture and advance them. The opposite is also true. When you suppress creativity, the system risks stagnation. This resonates with the sense of adventure that Friedmann says is essential for healthy leaders. It's also consistent with Carol Dweck's concept of the growth mindset, where one believes that mistakes and failures are not only a part of learning, it's how you grow more capable and resilient. The way I've heard it put recently is, the only time you fail is when you don't learn something. To build creative courage, you not only make room for risks, but you also shrink the stakes. I see two elements in the latter. The first is using a design thinking approach where you develop a minimum viable product and then test it out. In essence, you experiment with something that is developed enough to test your idea, but small enough that it doesn't take a lot of resources such as time and money.

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Then after you test the idea out, you take what you learn and iterate or pivot. I've used this approach in working with churches, and a byproduct of this is that resistance is minimized because the old guard, the resistant ones, aren't as threatened by small experiments. I believe the second way you shrink the stakes is by minimizing downside risk. That is, think through what would happen if you fail and try to minimize the impact. This goes to Seth Godin's idea that just because something feels risky doesn't mean it is risky. Of course, the payoff for creative courage is breakthrough innovations. You may not reach many breakthroughs, but the more you try, the more likely it will happen. That takes creative courage. The sixth and final type of everyday courage is physical courage. This is what you might think. It's enduring discomfort or believe in danger, especially in service to the mission and/or to others. Budak writes, In a business context, it's about showing up when it matters, whether that's walking the floor during a crisis or standing with your team in difficult conditions. Research shows this courage is often fueled by a mindset of resilience, optimism, and strong values and social support, qualities that help leaders move from hesitation to action.

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This is about physically and emotionally present, even out front, during challenging times. It's not about taking over a situation, but it is about showing up. For example, if the church building catches on fire, the pastor can be there, even as a let first responders work to put it out. Or when there is a natural disaster, the pastor and leaders can be on the front line handing out relief supplies. Budak suggests two ways to build physical courage. Train the discomfort muscle and proximity as policy. The first happens when you practice showing up in uncomfortable moments. The second happens when you make time to be in places where people are on the front line. When I was a co-op student in an auto manufacturing plant, my role was to move around from department to department, three months at a time, learning about the operation. This was mostly in the office, but there was a period spent on the production floor. This typically was shadowing a first-line supervisor, but I asked if I could work the production line. My main motivation was that I wanted to experience what it was like to actually do the work. What I found was that being willing to do the work, to get dirty, and to spend break and mealtimes with those on the front-line, earned credibility and trust.

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Which leads to the payoff, which is credibility with front-line teams and faster fact-based problem solving. The former is just as I described. The latter is what has been described as management walking around. When a leader is willing to engage with those who are doing the work with empathy, curiosity, and humility, they learn things that give them a better picture of reality, especially during challenging situations. I'll close by quoting Budak's last paragraph in the article, Courageous leadership doesn't hinge on rare dramatic moments. It's built through everyday choices. The leaders who rise in times of uncertainty are those who clarify what they stand for, celebrate of integrity and bold thinking, and commit to small, consistent actions that align their behaviors with their values. Practiced this way, everyday courage doesn't just shape decisions. It signals to your team that this is a place where truth Risk matters where risks are welcome, and where doing the right thing is expected. In a noisy, fast-moving world, that's a leadership edge competitors can't replicate. End quote. Every day courage is leadership through self-differentiation. It's what non-anxious leaders do. That's it for episode 347. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com and find more resources at the nonanxiousleader.com. If you have found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who would benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.

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Thank you for listening. If you found this episode helpful, there are two things you can do to help others find this podcast. First, tap the subscribe button on your podcast app, and second, leave a review. I appreciate your help. Finally, you can find more resources as well as subscribe to my blog at thenonanxiousleader.com. Now, go be yourself.